07.03.2025
International Women’s Day 2025: Emily Anderson
To mark International Women’s Day 2025, NUI is delighted to feature the remarkable career of Emily Anderson. Anderson graduated from University College Galway in 1911 and was Professor of German at the University from 1917 to 1920.
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Emily Anderson - Codebreaker
image - Courtesy of the private collection of
Dr Dagmar von Busch-WeiseEmily Anderson had an extraordinary life contributing to the war effort in the First World War and as a member of the British Foreign Office in World War Two. During the Great War, she served on the committee of the Galway sub-depot of the Irish War Hospital Supply Depot and assisted with the Galway War Fund. In 1920, she moved to London to work in the British Foreign Office and worked as code breaker in the Middle East. Not only was she an outstanding codebreaker, but she was also an excellent linguist: her English translations of the letters of Beethoven and Mozart were bestsellers in their day. Emily Anderson died in 1961 at the age of seventy-one. She was awarded the OBE in 1944 for her War Office service during the Second World War. The University of Galway has recognised her pioneering career: in 2017, the university named the concert hall in honour of Anderson.
She was the daughter of Alexander Anderson, President of University College Galway. Her brother, Alex Jr, also served in the First World War. He was reported missing in November 1916, and remained a prisoner of war until the end of the hostilities.
In 1919, the National University of Ireland compiled a war list of all students, graduates, and staff of University College Cork, University College Dublin, and University College Galway, who had died or served in the Great War. As part of NUI’s Decade of Centenary programme, the original honour roll was reprinted in 2024, along with a collection of essays. A substantive introduction to the Honour Roll is accompanied by a selection of individual personal profiles brings the men recorded in the roll to life. In addition to NUI’s list, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland’s Honour Roll is also reproduced along with an essay examining NUI doctors who served during the war. For the first time, a list of the chaplains from St Patrick’s College Maynooth is presented and their lives examined.
NUI’s women students, graduates, and staff and the ways in which they contributed to the war effort are also explored. To read more about the fascinating role of women like Emily Anderson, see Fionnuala’s Walsh’s chapter, ‘What has the war got to do with a dance? NUI women and the First World War’.Ronan McGreevy and Emer Purcell (eds), National University of Ireland First World War Centenary Roll of Honour and Essays (NUI, 2024) available in all good bookshops or buy online from www.fourcourtspress.ie
Further Reading:
Jackie Uí Chionna, The Queen of Codes: The Secret Life of Emily Anderson, Britain’s
Greatest Female Codemaker (London, 2023)
Walsh, Fionnuala, Irish Women and the Great War (Cambridge, 2020)NUI houses the archive of the University and the archive of the Royal University of Ireland.
https://www.internationalwomensday.com/
#AccelerateAction #IWD2025
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